Introduction

Over one year ago, AMD released the HD 7800 Series based on the company's Pitcairn silicon that uses the GCN shader architecture on a 28 nm process. The HD 7850 provides great midrange capabilities at affordable pricing.

PowerColor has a long history of engineering passively custom-cooled cards with their SCS series. The PowerColor HD 7850 SCS3 continues that saga and introduces a new option for gamers who want absolutely no noise coming from the graphics card while gaming at full HD.

Unlike many HD 7850 cards, the PowerColor HD 7850 SCS3 comes with just 1 GB of GDDR5 memory, which will reduce performance at resolutions beyond full HD; that said, 1080p full HD should be fine.

In terms of pricing, PowerColor expects a $25 premium over the 1 GB reference design.